Anheuser-Busch's horse and trainer reunited takes the top spot in a number of 2013 Super Bowl ad polls including USA Today.File Photo

A couple of days before the Super Bowl, a friend of mine and writer, Lee Lamberts, mentioned he was serving on the USA Today Ad Panel. I asked him how he got that gig and he sent me a web address to sign up and thus began my adventure as an ad panelist.

I love watching the Super Bowl ads and other than the halftime show (which this year didn't impress me), it is about the only reason I watch the Super Bowl. The 49ers are from San Francisco, that much I know, but I never knew there was a team named the Ravens until a couple of weeks ago when they defeated my husband's pick, the Patriots. I am not even sure where the Ravens are from...Baltimore I am told by a staff member.

There wasn't much to being on the panel. Starting at noon on Sunday, panelists were asked to log in and start rating ads. You could rate them up until the end of the fourth quarter. You reviewed the ad, scored it between 1 and 10, (one being yuck and ten being awesome) and moved on to the next. A little after noon, I registered in and there were about 25 ads available for viewing. Some ads were not available until they appeared on television. In total, there 54 Super Bowl ads that I rated and I rated the last one just minutes after the Ravens were declared the winner.

My criteria? Originality, creativity, and most of all, did it make the my group laugh or respond at all?

My top five picks:

Trainer and colt reunited by Anheuser-Busch: OK animals, especially baby animals are cute (although I wasn't impressed with the goat in the Doritos ad) but the reason I gave this one a 10 out of 10 was because the story of friendship not being forgotten is an important one especially with all that has happened in our nation over the past year. A little love goes a long way, so yeah the "awww" factor weighed in heavily.

Miracle Stain by Tide: This one was just funny and the fact that the wife was a Ravens fan - and the Ravens won - made the punchline even better.

Mirage by Coca-Cola: How you view something from one direction and the reality made me laugh. I also gave Coke kudos for its creative way of involving the audience giving them a chance to vote who would get the Coke first with the answer revealed right at the end of the game.

Epic Play Date by Hyundai: It was the last line of this commercial that put it in my top five. After all the family does in one day, the dad is still being asked what is next and finally he mentions he thinks there is a game on television...the humor was just perfect.

Jocks love Jared by Subway: Having struggled with a weight issue all my life and knowing the difficulties of trying to keep it off, I personally appreciated this commercial celebrating Jared's 15th anniversary of keeping 200 pounds off. It was creative, it was entertaining, and I think every person who manages to do what Jared has done got the round of applause they deserve with this one.

I am giving an honorable mentioned to the Lincoln's Wacky Road Trip which was based on tweets sent to Jimmy Fallon. It's a new twist to the "I write a line of the story and then the next person writes the next line, and so on." Some called the commercial boring and I think it would have done better if Lincoln had aired the actual ad versus an ad about what was done and then direct people to a website to see it.

There were some commercials, many of the movie clips, that the only reason I could figure were Super Bowl commercials were because they ran during the Super Bowl. And there were others, such as the Anheuser-Bush's singing fish in the Beck commercial, that left me asking "that was the best you could do?" I have to admit, I did appreciate the Calvin Klein commercial with the male model in underwear but as my companion admitted "I never once looked at the underwear." Neither did I and so the whole point was rather lost on both of us other than it was fun to watch.

How did my top choices stack up against the final results in the USA Today? Well, the trainer and horse reunited took the top spot with a total score of 7.76 with Tide's miracle stain coming in a close second at 7.75.

Some of my other choices didn't make the top ten, but they did fair well overall.

The worst 2013 Super Bowl commercial in the USA Today poll? GoDaddy.com's Bar Refeali make out. It was so bad, I wasn't sure I wanted to provide a link to it as I personally would like to pretend I never saw it. I mean seriously, what was GoDaddy thinking? Then again, if you can't get the top spot, try for the bottom because those are the two places everyone mentions.